[Not A Fiction] The Sad Showtunes Shit Scale

Rating musicals

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Anime scholars have produced the justly well-regarded Weeb Ass Shit Scale for rating anime:

It grades a given Anime from 0-10 on three different methods: Weeb, Ass, and Shit. An individual will have different degrees of tolerance for various levels on the different scales. 0 is low, 10 is high. 

Weeb is the degree to which the show assumes a familiarity with japanese pop culture or anime tropes in general, not only in terms of the actual content of the show, but occasionally at a conceptual level. Hyperspecialized high schools with all-powerful student councils, for example, add a couple points to the Weeb scale. Same goes for the presence or use of tropes that would be bizzare and off putting if you weren’t used to seeing such things in other anime. 

A zero on the Weeb scale could be enjoyed by somebody who doesn’t even know that Japan exists, a 10 assumes the audience possesses a PhD in japanese cultural studies with a focus on animation. Something like Cowboy Bebop comes in at a 1, while I’d put Kill-La-Kill at a 6. Anything of the form “These Girls are anthropomorphic versions of something else” rates at least a 7 in my book. 

Next comes the Ass Scale. Put simply, how much Fanservice is in the show. busty character design, male-gaze camera angles, skimpy outfits, hot spring episodes, character A tripping and landing in a compromising position on top of character B, all that nonsense. At a 0, you’ve got something you would watch with your Grandmother after church (Miyazaki’s stuff comes in at a 0). 

Finally, the Shit scale, which covers general overall quality. A 0 indicates that the show is flawless, a 10 holds that you would rather sandpaper your own face than watch it. It should be noted that the Shit scale should be judged independent of the others. Too much T&A shows up on the Ass scale. 

I humbly propose an extension of this research: the Sad Showtunes Shit scale for rating Broadway musicals. Like the Weeb Ass Shit scale, it is rated from 0 to 10.

Sad refers to how tragic a musical is. Please note that Sad is to be rated relative to other musicals. If we’re rating them according to the standards of cowards who think Avengers: Infinity War and Rogue One is the height of tragedy, then the only shows that get below a 7 are going to be Cinderella and 42nd Street. Les Miserables is a 9, because multiple characters survive and all the dead people are in Heaven.¹

The Music Man is a 0.

Showtunes refers to how, for lack of a better word, Broadway a show is. Things that increase a show’s Showtunes score include:

• Sequins and glitter

• Drag queens

• Breaking the fourth wall

• Tap numbers

• Divas

• Random songs that only exist to show off how good everyone is at singing and dancing

• Literally any scenes that are in any way about the process of putting on a musical

• Being about some insane thing for a play to be about, such as trains or T.S. Eliot's cat poetry or a chess game

• Being a revival that only makes sense if you are intimately familiar with the original production

• Being so fast that the only way anyone can understand what is going on is by having listened to the cast album to the point of nearly memorizing it

• The presence of Andrew Lloyd Webber, Bob Fosse, or Julie Taymor anywhere in the production

As of right now, the Showtunes 0 is a purely theoretical construct. There is nothing stopping people from writing a Showtunes 0, but they don’t. I think that there’s little demand for it—Broadway people like Broadway and non-Broadway people want to feel like they are getting the true Broadway experience. The kind of musicals you’d bring your mom to are usually a 4 or 5.

Moulin Rouge is a Showtunes 10. Starlight Express is an 11.

It is an Andrew Lloyd Webber musical about trains where the chorus line roller-skates. I have been driven to these extremes.

A musical automatically gains 5 Showtunes points if it is exclusively available in the form of a bootleg filmed on a cell phone hidden in someone’s purse from a seat where a pillar blocks half the stage. While bootlegs of Starlight Express exist, there is only one known occasion in which they were watched. Scientists have conjectured that the resulting explosion, known as the "Showtunes Singularity", retrocausally led to the spontaneous generation of John Waters.

Shit. A Shit musical is simply bad. Hamilton is a 0.² Cats is a 10. The essence of a 10 is that even people who like it go “yeah, this musical is a pile of shit.”

This point doesn’t, I think, require more elaboration.

1. Productions that imply Javert is in Hell may receive a 9.5.

2. It is not cool or funny to be a contrarian who dislikes fantastic things because they’re too popular. Hamilton is a 0.